festival
A festival is an annual ritual in which people lose themselves in public spaces, offering their wallets and sanity to merchants and local governments. The cheers of the crowd are nothing more than proof of a shared collective illusion, actually a mild spending-induced mass hysteria. Stall lights serve as makeup to hide the sting on household budgets. Fireworks color the night sky while mocking us with the irony of post-event trash. Though hailed as a bond-strengthener, what truly soars is a fleeting consumer euphoria more ephemeral than the fireworks themselves.